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Alexander Lebedev: The Independent is ‘a bit boring’

By Andrew Pugh

The owner of The Independent, Alexander Lebedev, appears to have hinted the newspaper could soon have a new editor.

Veteran editor Simon Kelner could be asked to head up a new foundation for investigative journalism that Lebedev plans to launch in London later this year, he told the Guardian.

In an interview with the newspaper the Russian billionaire said that he was ‘very happy’with Kelner but needed ‘one person to run one paper”, adding: ‘If you want to change the paper, you have to change the person”.

Lebedev admitted he found the Daily Mail ‘more entertaining’than The Independent, which he said was ‘a bit boring”.

“I get a lot of compliments in the City about the Standard. I don’t get them about the Indy,” he said.

He told The Guardian that ‘readers confronted on aeroplanes with a complimentary copy of the Daily Mail and the Independent were far more likely to read the Mail first’and that “the Daily Mail is more entertaining… But my opinion is as a reader and not as a proprietor.”

Lebedev did not rule out the possibility that The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and i – could eventually go free but said this would not be happening any time soon.

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